Six Flying Dragons: Episode 32

by HeadsNo2

If last episode belonged to our recently reformed but still hot-headed dragon, this one belongs to our usually even-tempered dragon, as he finally lets loose and shakes up the status quo. Jung Do-jeon is at his best when he’s not locked in a sitting position for scenes on end, and this hour is about unleashing him upon the world. Nameless better gird their loins and pray they won’t ever have to face the full force of their worst opponent’s might, but we get to wait for that confrontation with bated breath. Ah, the joys of being a viewer.

SONG OF THE DAY

Shin Yong-jae (of 4men) – “세상 한가운데 (In the Middle of the World)” [ Download ]

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EPISODE 32 RECAP

After Bang-won’s breakdown, the two sit by a warming fire as he tells Boon-yi that he’s expecting a reply from Nameless regarding her mother. He’ll keep his promise to her about her mother and the land reform.

Boon-yi eyes him warily, knowing that something must’ve happened for him to suddenly be talking about promises and why they can’t play together anymore. Instead of answering her, Bang-won just asks her to say his name.

“Bang-won-ah,” she says. He sheepishly asks her again, and she obliges: “Bang-won-ah. Lee Bang-won.” At his happy smile, she asks what that was all about, only for him to tell her not to say his name like that again. Nor to use informal speech.

He holds back tears as he says this, but Boon-yi tries to comfort him by saying she understands. Then she corrects herself so she says that she understands formally, rather than the informal speech they’re used to.

“If you call my name…” Bang-won begins to explain, but he can’t tell her that it would be hard on him, or that it would make him feel weak. But Boon-yi again comforts him by again telling him that she understands, and he doesn’t need to explain.

She knows that he’ll become a member of the royal family if everything works out, so of course she’ll need to use formal speech with him. The fact that he let her speak informally for this long was a privilege she was grateful for, because it made her feel like a true friend to him.

“So the people will feel happiness in their lives every day, become a great member of the royal family and practice good politics,” she adds. Bang-won looks at her with tears in his eyes before he suddenly closes the gap between them and kisses her. They stay like that for a long while, with Boon-yi held in his arms.

After declaring to himself that he will make a place for himself where Jung Do-jeon said there wasn’t one, Bang-won is approached by Nameless (in the form of Yeon-hyang, though he doesn’t know her) and is taken to the Tribunal, blindfolded.

He can see their shapes behind the screens hung in front of them, and wonders aloud whether they’re trying to see if he’s fit for ruling. Yeon-hyang speaks for all three of them when she says that they only intend to find out whether Cho-young spoke the truth about him.

Since Cho-young told them that Bang-won was angered by Jung Do-jeon’s plans to give the prime minister almost total power, they ask him to explain his thoughts to them. Bang-won shrugs the idea off, claiming he already told Cho-young everything and has no more to say on the matter.

But what they want to know is if Jung Do-jeon’s five point plan, or ohchik, is enough to turn Bang-won against him. His voice lowers as he accuses them of already having made up their minds on that matter, and he stands as he tells them that he will not be another Hong Ryun.

The two men on either side of Nameless Grandma rise up to stop him (and are not Gil Sun-mi or Yooksan), which immediately tells Bang-won that it’s she who is the leader here. He bows to her, and proposes that they each ask three questions of each other.

She agrees, so Bang-won goes first. “What is this organization’s goal?” When she answers that it’s stability for the country, Bang-won can’t help but laugh. They put Lee In-gyeom in a high position and put Goryeo in the state it’s in, and they call that stability?

Yeon-hyang defends their choice, claiming that more political upheaval happened when Lee In-gyeom stepped down—namely, the two kings who’ve abdicated since. Then it’s time for Granny to ask a question about the ohchik, which isn’t the first time they’ve mentioned it. Bang-won starts to wonder why.

Gil Sun-mi rides hard to try and make it to the meeting, anxious that Bang-won will tell them about Yeon-hyang’s children being alive. He flashes back to the end of his conversation with Cho-young, where she called him out on not delivering the dead bodies of Yeon-hyang’s children because he couldn’t do something so cruel to her.

The insinuation being, of course, that he harbored special feelings for her. Cho-young had also scoffed that she couldn’t understand why Yeon-hyang had children with someone from the country. Wait… is Gil Sun-mi their father?

We only hear the fifth point of the ohchik as Bang-won explains it, which is the rule about royal family members being unable to participate in politics. To his question about when Nameless started, Nameless Granny answers that it was during the Silla Dynasty, under Queen Seon-deok’s rule. Specifically, a person called Yeom Jong, a name which Bang-won recognizes as a traitor who was closely tied with Bidam.

Their next question is what Bang-won would do about the tradition wherein the king asks the head monk for advice when making important national decisions, and of course he’d abolish it. He’s trying to make a country of sadaebu, and such an archaic method would be out of place.

His last question is whether a Yeon-hyang exists in their organization, and all the real Yeon-hyang answers is, “Yes, there is.” Her final return question is why he wants to know, and he tells her that Yeon-hyang’s children are looking for her. Both her and Nameless Granny try to hide their shock.

Gil Sun-mi arrives too late to stop those words coming out of Bang-won’s mouth, and meets instead with Nameless Granny’s rage. He wants only to speak with Yeon-hyang, who steps out from behind a boulder.

Yooksan is not happy to hear that Yeon-hyang’s children are alive, mainly because he was the one who orchestrated their (not-)deaths to look like a rival faction within Nameless had committed the murders. That was how he got Yeon-hyang to join them in the first place.

Cho-young tells him where the children are now, while also sighing over Yeon-hyang’s pitiful fate. Though they both trained together to become Mugeuk candidates (I’m guessing some offshoot of Nameless), only Yeon-hyang succeeded. Now, she is Mugeuk. So… not an offshoot?

That’s evident when Gil Sun-mi falls to his knees before Mugeuk, aka Yeon-hyang. This comes as a huge shock to Jukryong, who also falls to his knees before her. So is she the true leader?

Gil Sun-mi has a lot of explaining to do, and admits that he lied about her children being killed by an opposing faction so that she wouldn’t go running off to her hometown. She immediately knows he did so on Yooksan’s orders, and vows revenge.

He stops her, warning her that they can’t afford to get into another civil war. He also reluctantly tells her where her children are—Lee Bang-ji, the best swordsman in the Three Kingdoms, is her son. Boon-yi currently works for Lee Seong-gye’s private army.

Yeon-hyang realizes then that she was the one who ordered him to trick her son for the assassination attempt on Lee Seong-gye. But Gil Sun-mi defends that he did so by telling him he could meet his mother, and also makes it seem as though he tricked Bang-ji away in order to protect him.

Steadily losing her cool, Yeon-hyang stabs a dagger into Gil Sun-mi’s chest and dares him to continue. He does, stating that all this misfortune started when she betrayed Nameless, abandoned him, and ran away to her hometown. When she’s the reason he abandoned the king and joined Nameless in the first place.

Pulling her dagger out, all Yeon-hyang says to him is to keep this a secret from Yooksan. She doesn’t know that Yooksan already knows, and he assumes she doesn’t when she puts him in charge of Lee Bang-won. He’s to find out everything he can about Jung Do-jeon’s plans, which are dangerous to their cause.

Bang-won updates the two worried siblings on what he’s learned of their mother, though he seems to be holding back information when he tells them that Nameless seemed shocked when he mentioned her by name. He claims to know no more than that.

Yooksan firmly believes that Gil Sun-mi didn’t tell Yeon-hyang the truth in order to prevent another civil war within Nameless, but the mystery as to who killed Traitor Baek is still ongoing. They’ve narrowed it down to the woman they saw with the king, though they have no idea who she really is.

Bang-won then updates Jung Do-jeon on his meeting with Nameless, leaving out the part where he told them about the ohchik. What’s most important to Jung is that they believed Bang-won, but before he lets the young dragon go, he gives him a word of advice.

“In order to deceive your enemy, you have to deceive those around you and yourself as well. But if you deceive yourself for too long, you run the risk of becoming the lie you’re telling. Be careful.” Which leads Bang-won to wonder whether Jung Do-jeon might know more than he’s letting on.

Master Hong trains Bang-won’s private army using his patented martial arts style, but when they’re not getting the grunting sound properly, he has Moo-hyul do a demonstration for them. Watching Moo-hyul move and grunt pointedly is maybe the funniest scene in this show so far. You just have to see/hear it.

The perpetually outraged Jo Joon (stop yelling, everyone can hear you) demands that Jung Do-jeon’s team do something about the corrupt land surveying going on, since the noble class is using it to divert even more land to themselves. At this rate, there won’t be anything left for the people.

Now it’s finally Lee Seong-gye’s turn to get upset, since he must look like a monster to the people—he’d promised to return their stolen lands upon his retreat from Wihwa Island. But all he’s done is kill General Choi, attack General Jo and the elite noble class, and he made the deposed King Woo and the tiny King Chang kill themselves by drinking poison.

On top of that, he also sent the revered Lee Saek into exile, so how must he look to the people? Jung Do-jeon lays out their options, neither of which are very good, since continuing the land survey in such a haphazard manner will mean that they’ll never get the equal division of land they dreamt of.

Jung Do-jeon doesn’t know which option they should take, and even confides this to Bang-ji. He asks how Bang-ji knows whether to attack or defend in a fight, but Bang-ji says it’s not the choice that matters so much as believing in that choice.

“But what if you make the wrong choice?” Jung Do-jeon asks. “Then you die,” Bang-ji replies matter-of-factly.

With rumors circulating that Lee Seong-gye made his retreat from Wihwa Island just to become king, Jung Do-jeon takes Boon-yi aside to get her opinion on the land matter. He explains that if they allow the survey to go on as it is, the people who’ve had their lands stolen will get them back, but the equal distribution they’d hoped for will never come to pass.

Boon-yi tells him that all her people who’ve been hoping for land to come out of this reform would tell him not to give up, which is when Jung Do-jeon admits that it’s no easy task. She doesn’t deny that, but knows that he never takes the easy route. “You won’t forget about the people. You will do something about it,” she adds with certainty.

Jung Do-jeon remembers meeting her as an adult, and how she’d declared that she wouldn’t—couldn’t—just stand by and do nothing. “I have to at least do something to live!” she’d said. In the present, Jung Do-jeon smiles, feeling now what she felt then. “I believe in you,” Boon-yi says for added support.

So Jung Do-jeon returns to the group with a plan solidified: They’ll go along with the land reform as it stands, but they won’t give up on the equal distribution because of it. He’s ordered Shin-jeok to help him in this regard, and Officer Nam fills us in on his long absence by being all, “Oh yeah, what’s he been up to?”

Dressed in plainclothes, Lee Seong-gye goes out into the market to see the public display of mourning for the loss of General Choi. The sinister ministers once belonging to Minister Hong’s camp make it their job to turn the tide of public opinion against Lee, since they don’t want to lose their land.

They rouse the people into directing their anger at Jung Do-jeon, whom they claim even locked up his own teacher (Lee Saek) out of a ruthless grab for power. His land reform is just more proof of his greed, they claim, and the people seem ready to believe it.

And unbeknownst to Bang-ji, the mother he’s been looking for is there among the crowd, staring at her son.

After King Gongyang takes Lee Seong-gye to task for the public’s outrage, he tells Sa-kwang to report the conversation to Jung Mong-joo. She’s waylaid en route by Jukryong’s thugs, but saved when Moo-hyul comes upon the scene and beats them into submission.

She thanks him by using the magic word (Warrior-nim), causing Moo-hyul to stare at her with hearts in his eyes. He insists on escorting her where she needs to go, and thinks that everything she says is the neatest thing ever—like how she dances, and plays instruments.

Sa-kwang uses his enamored state to ask him where he stays, since he seemed to be quite skilled in martial arts. And with a goofy smile, Moo-hyul asks if he could watch her dance. Sa-kwang offers him a gracious smile and promises that if she ever has a chance to show him, she will.

No sooner does Moo-hyul turn the corner does she turn around to see Jukryong’s thugs again, but she refuses to go with them. They think she’s lost her only protection in Moo-hyul, until she takes one of their swords and deftly uses the flat of the blade and the dull side to fell each and every one of them in quick succession.

That’s when Jukryong jumps into the fray, and their ensuing battle pits their superior martial arts skills against each other. But in the end, Sa-kwang prevails. “Are you Nameless?” she asks, before seemingly growing nervous. Suddenly she says it doesn’t matter where he came from, only that he never bother her, King Gongyang, or Jung Mong-joo again.

Jukryong takes the news straight to Yooksan that the girl the king was going to marry is the one who killed Traitor Baek and the two assassins. He adds that he was sorely outmatched by her, leading Gil Sun-mi to the conclusion that she could be Cheok Sa-kwang.

Nameless knows now that they won’t be able to stop the land reform from passing, so all they can do is try to make the terms more favorable to them. But Yeon-hyang has a keen eye on opponent Jung Do-jeon, who finds himself commending Bang-won on finally becoming an adult.

Since Bang-won admitted that there’s no way for them to know how taking this one step back on the reform will affect them in the future, Jung Do-jeon knows he’s changed—if it were the old and impatient Bang-won, he could’ve predicted his actions easily.

“You did not care what came before or after, nor did you look ahead of time with your childish and short-sighted judgment,” Jung Do-jeon notes. But now, Bang-won 2.0 is making decisions befitting an adult of stature, and he’s proud of him. Otherwise, he would’ve made decisions that he couldn’t turn back from.

Jung Do-jeon instructs Boon-yi to gather her market contacts outside the Taxation Office, and leaves the door open so she can invite all of them inside. They cause a diversion for the sinister ministers putting on a show to sway the people, which draws everyone’s attention away from them and toward the source of their supposed panic.

Inside one of the city gates, Boon-yi and her people gather every taxation record they collected from the office into a big, burnable pile. Jung Do-jeon steps in front to address the crowd of onlookers, telling them that everything they’ve accused him of doing is because of those records piled behind him.

All of Goryeo’s land deeds are in that pile, which means that the records of the lands stolen from them are also there too. He appeals to the people by sympathizing with their sense of loss, blaming the insane taxation enacted by Minister Hong and his ilk for taking their lands from them.

To make matters worse, he says, the sinister ministers who were responsible for stealing their land in the first place are the ones going against the reform by using complicated political logic. He points at those men directly as he bellows, “Politics! What is politics? Politics may look complicated, but in truth, it is quite simple!”

And then, “Politics is to share, to distribute amongst the people. The problem with politics is who to collect from and who to give it to, who to take from and whose bellies to fill.” He points at the ministers again as he asks who they’ve taken from and who they gave to, knowing that they stole from the people to give only to themselves.

“I, Jung Do-jeon, will participate in politics from now on,” he declares. Lighting a torch, he passes the flame on to the people. Dozens of torches light up, surrounding the pile of records. He asks the people if they’d rather divide up the already corrupted land of Goryeo, or if they’d rather slash-and-burn and start anew.

The people cry for the latter, so Jung Do-jeon pours oil on the records. The joy from the crowd is instantaneous, and Bang-won realizes with a small smile that this is what Jung Do-jeon meant about making a decision where there’s no turning back. If all the land deeds are burned, there will be no choice but to divide and distribute the land evenly.

Jung Do-jeon says he’s unqualified to burn the pile since he’s never had to slash-and-burn anything before, willing to give the power over to the farmers. But Bang-won announces from the crowd that the offer should be extended to anyone who’s set a fire before, causing many of the spectators to speak out about how they burned their houses down when their lands were stolen.

That’s the final straw in turning the tide of the crowd in their favor, and they all rush forward to set fire to the pile. The ministers’ protests mean nothing now, and they get to watch the records burn just like everyone else.

“Now, the land in this nation will be reborn!” Jung Do-jeon declares victoriously, laughing as he looks into the flames. The chyron tells us that this was a real historical event that happened in September of 1930, and that the fire burned steady for days after.

Jung Mong-joo watches from the crowd, amazed that Jung Do-jeon has done it again. But he vows to make his old friend step down and rest soon.

Bang-won watches Jung Do-jeon laugh while backlit by the growing fire and thinks to himself, “I.. that man… I still like him. Damn it.” With that, he allows himself to be swept up in the mood and smiles.

 
COMMENTS

I wouldn’t have believed Bang-won if he said he didn’t like him, since that man is a charismatic magnet that pulls respect and admiration out of anyone who hears him speak. It almost makes you angry at the show for letting Jung Do-jeon just sit in various rooms for what feels like way too long now, having to always restrain himself so as not to deter Jung Mong-joo away from their cause.

And in so many ways, this episode was the perfect companion piece to the last, since without it, the audience might’ve turned away from Jung Do-jeon. Not that they still can’t now, but it’s yet more evidence that this show knows exactly what it’s doing by first focusing on Bang-won’s struggle and our empathy toward him, and then by focusing on Jung Do-jeon’s side of things. Even Bang-won, who was determined to turn away from the man he wanted so badly to follow into the depths of hell not too long ago, couldn’t help but admit that he’s quite the rousing orator.

We didn’t get the same intimate glimpse into Jung Do-jeon’s inner struggle and thought processes like we did with Bang-won, which in a way, makes his actions harder to predict. What was humanizing was how he found himself genuinely lost this episode, and how he sought advice and solace from people like Boon-yi and Bang-ji. He didn’t turn to Jung Mong-joo, Lee Seong-gye, or anyone else who’s had their fingers in the land reform pie. He turned instead to the people, since in the end, it’s really all about them.

How much it really is about them is up for debate, of course, and it’s really been a joy on my end to see such lively discourse go on these past few weeks. It’s had me thinking about politics from all different angles, and how each of our dragons has been designed to be representative of a bigger group. And how no version of politics exists that can make everyone happy, no matter how hard people like Jung Do-jeon try.

So the idea that the good use of politics will be some kind of cure-all for the nation’s ills is an interesting, if not somewhat misguided notion. Jung Do-jeon acts on behalf of the people, yet he’s unwilling to give them any sort of voice in governing. Bang-won acts on behalf of himself, believing that if and when he has power, he can use it to help the people. Which of them is really in this for the greater good is yet to be determined, but in the meantime: Burn, baby, burn.

 
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